Navy waterfront plan faces new hurdle

Manchester project should be redesigned, staff argues

Pacific Gateway calls for four office towers, three hotels and other retail and cultural buildings and amenities at the Navy Broadway Complex, seen in this 2007 image by project architect Gensler.
— California Coastal Commission

Pacific Gateway calls for four office towers, three hotels and other retail and cultural buildings and amenities at the Navy Broadway Complex, seen in this 2007 image by project architect Gensler.
/ California Coastal Commission

The proposed $1 billion, 3.25-million-square-foot reconstruction of the Navy’s downtown waterfront, approved 20 years ago but unbuilt because of financing conditions, now faces a new roadblock.

The California Coastal Commission is set to approve a resolution at its Nov. 2 meeting in Oceanside that would scuttle the plan and require the Navy and its developer, Doug Manchester, to come up with a new proposal. The coastal position was contained in a staff report released Friday.

The staff said the office-hotel-retail development, “Pacific Gateway” planned by Manchester at the foot of Broadway, needs a new “consistency determination” to make sure it complies with the state coastal act.

“The staff believes both that significant changes in the project have occurred, and, further, that significant changes in the character of the San Diego waterfront have occurred over the past 20 years,” the staff report says.

The Navy asked that the item be delayed because of pending litigation with the commission but also argued that conditions have not changed from what was envisioned and the project should be able to proceed.

“As the activity contains no substantial project changes or foreseeable coastal effects not reviewed previously, an additional coastal consistency review for the activity is not required by the federal coastal zone management regulations,” wrote Capt. Markham K. Rich, acting commander of the Navy’s southwest region, headquartered at the Broadway complex.

If the full commission adopts the staff recommendation, the project would be declared inconsistent with the state’s coastal management program and, presumably, require the Navy to return with a revamped project.

Ian Trowbridge, cochairman of the Navy Broadway Complex Coalition that has opposed the project, welcomed the coastal staff’s findings and called the Navy’s counterarguments “weak.”

“If the developer wants to try to meet the consistency requirement, let him present a new project,” Trowbridge said. “They would have to go through an new environmental impact report and then see whether it’s consistent.”

Pacific Gateway at a glance

Land owner: U.S. Navy

Developer: Doug Manchester

Location: Blocks bounded Broadway, Pacific Highway and Harbor Drive to the west and south

Development plan: 3.25 million square feet containing 3 hotels with about 1,450 rooms (including one with two towers); 3 office towers plus one for the Navy; 250,000-square-feet of retail, entertainment, restaurants and cultural space; above-grade parking; 1.9-acre park at Broadway and Harbor Drive; and additional pedestrian promenade and other public space

Perry Dealy, Manchester’s development manager for the project, said the project details had been approved years ago. The size of the development can’t be reduced, he said, because the income from the commercial side is needed to support the cost and operation of a 362,000-square-foot office building promised to the Navy at no cost to taxpayers.

“We’re still open to make it better,” he said of the project. “But we can’t reduce the program or else it’s not financially feasible.”

Dealy said he is working with financial consultants to secure a development partner and could reach an agreement early next year unless the coastal commission intervenes.

The Navy Broadway Complex’s history goes back to the military’s buildup in San Diego. Voters approved transfer of the land at the foot of Broadway for a naval supply center in 1920 and the current building at Broadway and Harbor Drive, now the Navy’s regional headquarters, opened in 1922. The annex building to the south dates to 1942. Other low-rise buildings were built before and after World War II.

In 1987, Congress gave the Navy permission to lease the property in exchange for the promised new headquarters.

Master planning and design review resulted in city, redevelopment and coastal approval in 1991-92 for a massive development of offices, hotels, retail and other nonresidential uses.

But a developer did not gain control of the land until 2006, when Manchester won a long-term lease, details of which remain secret.

Manchester won a federal court ruling that he does not need a coastal development permit and the commission has appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The coastal staff argues that the buildup of downtown from the addition of high-rise residential towers to the construction of Petco Park and new uses along the waterfront argue for a reassessment of the Broadway Complex plan.

Coastal planners suggest in the report that Manchester add more public open space along Harbor Drive, lower building heights at the water’s edge, return the museum to the original site and modify other details. The staff also calls for more investigation of potential earthquake faults.

Dealy said some of these details have been agreed to.

“When you look at it in its totality, it’s a great project,” Dealy said, arguing it would replace 14 acres of fenced-in old buildings with a “great attraction to downtown.”